Since custom DECORATE weapons have been available, I always thought it would be cool to finally make that weapons mod where the shotgun was the crappy level 1 weapon and the minigun was superb quality. However, I have noticed that a lot of weapon mods still romanticize the shotgun as a great level 2-3 weapon. Has no one else thought of it this way?

Also, I've noticed the desire to continue to make a double barreled shotgun a super version of a combat shotgun, despite that the combat shotgun with a magazine is actually the superior ammo slugger in most cases. How about a weapons mod where you get the double barreled shotgun first, and the tactical shotgun later?

I think the "romanticizing" of the shotgun comes from Doom's implementation of it, where the original is a great jack of all trades type weapon while the double barreled is a weapon of mass destruction. I agree that the SSG is way overpowered and should have been toned down.

I've actually kind of done what you suggested in my latest mod, Apocalypse WOW, only you start with a single barreled. The way I've implemented the shotguns makes them great for small crowds of weaker monsters and individuals but pretty bad with crowds of larger or stronger enemies, making them a medium class weapon like they should be.

It's hard to rebalance Doom's ammo structure. You have to figure how much damage you can do with 50 shells, and then figure out how powerful a weapon should be to match the shotgun's damage-per-shot factor, how fast it should be, and then figure out exactly how much of the new ammo the player would need to use to get the equivalent of a single shotgun shell.

Of course, we're probably not likely to take it to as obsessive a length as that...

Also, you must also factor in the fact that the shotguns are the single most common weapon in Doom, and that mappers are more likely to give you a box of shotgun shells than they are anything else.

In DDF, you can make enemies resistant or immune to up to 26 attacks or attack groups. In the last two releases of my mod, the shotguns where fine uintil you encounter Hell Knights and Barons - at which point you'd want to use another gun due to lack of effectiveness.

And they are absolutely useless against the cyberdemon and the mastermind because I made both immune to small arms in general.

i think the reason why people romanticise the shotgun is because it sounds more powerful than a friggin' rocket launcher and yet...in the real world, you can't penetrate a kevlar vest with 00 buckshot; you have to use a slug.

However, the amount of damage a shotgun does do to soft targets is immense.